ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the history of educators’ reports about the aims and effects of early education and child care programs in the United States from the eighteenth century through the early 1930s when the three current forms of US early education and care programs (kindergarten, pre-school, day care) were in place. The chapter emphasizes the influence of the sociohistorical context on the content of educators’ statements and on the form and content of early education/ care programs as they developed in the United States. The analyses of educators’ statements suggest that class, ethnic, and gender-related assumptions have had a strong influence on the way aims and effects were stated in the past, and that similar assumptions shape the policies and practices in the field today. The historical analysis also shows that kindergarten and, eventually, nursery school, leaders’ attempts to professionalize the field of early education, to make it be or appear to be scientific, and to affiliate with other professional and scientific organizations resulted in costs as well as benefits to early childhood education and child care programs as they developed. In the summary of the paper, persistent aims, effects, and cultural and socioeconomic factors that have affected educators’ reports as well as the the American early education field are summarized and discussed.
